The Lytro camera, named after the company, is about 11cm long, and 4cm square, and has a lens on one end, and an LCD touch screen display at the other. Along the sides are the shutter button, USB port, and a strip that controls the zoom function - 8x. It's a pretty different design to your standard camera, which is generally loaded with more buttons than you actually know how to use. (true story).
On the inside, is where it's really different. Conventional digital cameras use lenses to focus a subject so it's sharp on the image sensor, then it takes the picture. That means that for an in-focus part of the image, light from only one direction reaches the sensor. In the Lytro though, light from multiple directions hits each patch of the sensor; the camera records this directional information, and after-the-shot computing converts it into something a human eye can understand. This means that the focal point of the image can be re-adjusted multiple times on the computer, even after the image has been taken.
This means that you can whip it out, take a photo of a scene before it changes (a bird flying away, someone's smile, a fast-paced scene) and then fix it up later. In addition, this kind of photographic technology (known as light-field photography) allows the images taken to be shown in 3D - because you have an image with potential multiple depths-of-field.
There are three models - the $399 cameras with 'electric blue' and 'graphite' exteriors whose 8GB of built-in memory is enough for about 350 shots and the 'red hot,' 16GB camera that can record 750 shots. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like you can expand the storage space once it's purchased.
US residents can apparently order one online now, according to Chief Executive Ren Ng, and they'll be shipped in the first quarter of 2012. No word yet on a international release, but you could probably just import one if you wanted to.
via Cnet
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